The local news battle is especially fierce as the TV ratings race tightens and media outlets try to get credit for the buzz they’re kicking up on digital platforms.

Did you see Brian Maass reporting on Denver International Airport importing out-of-state artists to paint a mural? Or John Ferrugia dumpster-diving for unsecured marijuana left behind dispensaries? Or the extended series on dog behavior that 9News ran in the aftermath of a certain dog bite? Or Fox31’s mercenary replays of the bite footage?

All these reports ran during the late local newscasts during the February sweeps, one of the key TV showdowns when local ratings are measured to set future advertising rates.

Who won? The short answer: KUSA, as usual. But KCNC is within roughly 6,000 households of being the most-watched station at 10 p.m.

The bigger question for February 2012 is not simply whether viewers saw these stories, but how? On TV, smartphone, tablet or laptop?

As media audiences continue to fragment, some local TV news executives argue the traditional measuring tools are outmoded.

According to KUSA, which has enjoyed a long run as the unapproachable ratings kingpin but has seen its TV dominance fade in recent years, it’s time for new metrics. Is this a matter of moving the goalposts midway through the game? Or is it true that the old Nielsen method of calling the race captures only part of the picture? There’s truth in both sentiments.

Here are the Nielsen results of Denver’s late-news race for February, among adults 25-54, Monday-Sunday, the measurment counted by the paying customers, advertisers. (Rating refers to the percentage of TV households in the market; share is the percentage of TV sets actually in use.)

“In addition to having the No. 1 newscasts from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week, 9news.com received over 35 million page views, with nearly 3 million video streams and over 8.4 million page views on mobile devices and tablets,” according to a post-sweeps press release.

People are increasingly getting their media fix on mobile platforms.

“Because of the change in consumer behavior beyond TV ratings, we need to begin to evolve the conversation around digital and mobile,” said KUSA boss Mark Cornetta. He’d like to judge his station’s performance by Comscore, which measures monthy traffic and unique visits to the 9News website.

By that definition, The Denver Post regularly reaches about 35 percent of the audience on its various platforms. 9News draws about 30 percent of the audience to its various platforms. KMGH-Channel 7 draws about 15 percent; KDVR and KCNC fight for 10-12 percent.

Every station uses different systems of measurement and finds bragging rights somewhere.

“We have more Twitter followers than any other station, at 15,928,” said a spokeswoman for KCNC.

That’s a lot of tweeting, and as soon as someone figures out how to “monetize” those 140-character blurbs, that will be significant.

Channel 4 prefers to count the household viewing number, not the usual 25-54 demographic advertisers target, which puts CBS4 “at or near the top,” virtually tied with 9News.

“We don’t have a metric that includes overall reach including Facebook and mobile,” according to KMGH news director Jeff Harris. “We would do very well in that analysis.” For now, he is able to claim “we’re the only station in town that has mobile text alerts for school closings.”

“Twitter is about engagement,” said KDVR-KWGN chief Peter Maroney. “That’s the code word. How much are people engaged with your station or personalities. I’m told there’s value in that … we’re striving to grow all those social media metrics.”

Fox31 Denver claims to lead the Denver market in Facebook fans.

Fox31 also claims to have Denver’s fastest-growing newscasts, based on the February results. “Competitively, Fox 31 Denver attracted, on average, 12,500 additional viewers to its daily newscasts between February 2011 and February 2012. By contrast,” the station said, “9News KUSA lost 20,300 viewers from its daily newscasts.”

In the dark ages, say, 10 years ago, executives argued at the end of a sweeps period about whether to count the late news battles on weeknights only or to include the weekend. Now the slicing and dicing goes much farther afield. ComScore? Google Analytics? Nielsen? Omniture? Flurry Analytics?

KMGH news directorJeff Harris noted the industry is waiting for the new measurement tool that will combine online, onscreen and mobile data.

“How we base this multibillion-dollar industry on 600 meters in a market, with such variances and fluctuations day to day, leaves us scratching our heads and throwing things,” Harris said. “Everybody is waiting for a system that allows us to take a look at the whole picture and allows some consistency.”

Meow Wolf, the for-profit artist collective in Santa Fe, is planning a complex just west of downtown Denver. As that project shapes up, Meow Wolf officials are establishing a presence in the city by giving financial support to local arts organizations.